For older Americans (and probably all older world citizens), the last 20 years of technology are a blur. Old style rotary, ringing phones have been replaced not just with cell phones, but with tablets, texts, email, Tumblr, twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Pintarest, and other devices and sites too numerous to remember, let alone follow.

And none of them ring. They tweet, chirp, chime, play The Beatles, or vibrate. (In my day, vibrating devices were not used in public.)

The speed at which information is shared is mind-boggling. I spent four decades writing for pleasure, for example, and published both books on Kindle in about 30 minutes.

Now I need people to buy them, so here I am, writing a blog: a word selfie.

(If you don’t know what a “selfie” is, don’t bother looking it up. You won’t know how to, anyway, since it won’t be in your Encyclopedia Brittanica.)

For the record, I am one of many older Americans not prepared for retirement, so you buying my books would supplement my income. Think of it as a Pity Sale.

But that leads to a public service message and justifies today’s effort. While not financially ready for retirement, I am far better off than 10 years ago, when I finally learned the need for basic Financial Planning.  It made a huge difference in the nature and quality of my retirement.

For those in a similar situation, run as fast as possible to get financial planning of your own. But–more importantly–get your children to listen to you and do the same. It is sad to admit youth is wasted on the young, but even sadder to learn time runs out, and the more of it you have left, the better off your finances. If you plan.

For those older citizens reading this, remember when your parents gave YOU good advice?

Actually, when we were a young, how would we have known it was “good”? What do parents know?

Look for more, here, about planning but first buy my books at Amazon Kindle. Search my name without the middle initial.

And if you need good, solid, common sense help with financial planning, you’ll see some of that here, soon.